Everyone knows what a bad hair day is. Well chickens have bad feather days. It is when they are molting. When my chickens are swapping out old feathers for new they look terrible. They have the chicken equivalent of a bad hair day. Just like the millions of women who know when they are having a bad hair day, chickens know it too. On the worse days they stay in the coop embarrassed to be seen out and about half feathered.
They look like they had a fight with the fox and left with their life a just a few feathers.. They look like they accidentally fell in the plucker live! You can see all the goose flesh where feathers used to be and pin feathers where they are already starting to grow back. I am not sure why but they usually seem to pick the end of warm weather to do this. So as they nights get cooler, they have less to protect them.
We have had our first snow, and the nights are now in the teens. One of my prettiest chickens has started to molt and there is no doubt she is having one bad feather day.
OMG this chicken looks horrible! Your beautiful ladies are now ugly! Great picture tho…
And as nasty as she looks, she has had a personality adjustment is as nasty as can be. She is now just plain wicked.
You are so right about them molting when the cold weather starts – it seems like madness but perhaps the new feathers are winter weight. They do look very sad indeed 😉
I’m sorry but I laughed out loud at this photo. You have described it so well. She looks truly embarrassed but she has had to come out of hiding and she is trying to look so non-plussed but she is definitely not pulling it off. 🙂
Looks a bit like those “chicks” that walk those modeling runways…